Friends of Dave #330: horatio magellan crunch
I have a few thoughts...
Just a few random thoughts for you this week:
It continues to amaze (and frustrate) me how the experiences of going to the dentist and taking your car in for service have morphed into a nearly identical customer experience:
You go in feeling fine and thinking you are being responsible by getting a simple check up or problem fixed and you end up leaving with pain and feeling like you made a mistake and never want to come back.
Maybe our real future is zero car ownership and universal dentures….
The return of (unseasonably) warm weather for a few days this week made me wonder….it’s well documented that where I live people are obsessed with waiting as long as they can before turning on the heat in the Fall (“that’s what friggin’ afghans ah fo-ah, brutha”). It’s like a badge of honor….Wondering how many of those people had their central ACs going this week when temps briefly reached July/August (aka “wicked ho-at”) levels?
And what happens when the temps drop to more seasonal levels? Does the furnace calendar timer reset? Heat still okay or is it now afghans all day until November?
I would absolutely subscribe to a service that ensured my camera and my audio profile settings were universally set so I could switch between Zoom, Microsoft Teams, WebEx, Google Meet, etc. without spending the first 5 minutes of each meeting adjusting them each time….
Recommend watching the Brooke Shields documentary “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields” on Hulu. It is shocking to see how the adults around her (not just her mother) consistently and egregiously failed her throughout her earliest years — with “Blue Lagoon” perhaps being the tamest example….the clips of interviews with the old school talk show hosts have a completely different, cringey feel now that you have context…
My wife applied for Global Entry last Saturday, had her application preliminarily approved 24 hours later, and was able to schedule an interview at the airport first thing this past Monday AM. Whole process from start to finish completed in 3 days and she is now just awaiting her card in the mail. This has to be some sort of record, right?
We are planning a trip to Paris, 4 days, just the two of us. Food and sightseeing recommendations (beyond obvious)? Open to your suggestions.
Who knew? Pez candy was invented to help smoker’s quit……click »here« to go down a random facts rabbit hole that continues with the link in the Random section below and could very well take up your entire day.
For all of you with teenagers, some hope…..the older my children get (our oldest turned 24 a few weeks ago) the more satisfaction I have seeing them genuinely repeat things we told them growing up as if they are now discovering them for the first time. While they may fight you or seem to ignore you, know that most of the lessons you are teaching them are heard — you just may not get gratification that the message has been received when you want it.
For me, the best part is when they go on some sort of rant and then exclaim “Ugh, I can’t believe it — I’m sounding just like you…”
I know, just what the world needs — my offspring ranting just like me…..
That’s all I got this week, Friends. Some really good links below if you have some time — check them out.
XOXO
Dave
Think on This…
The news is mostly an aggregation of every bad event that happened in the last twenty four hours, anywhere on Earth.
News coverage is terrible at capturing the biggest good news stories: the long-term trends that show vast improvements in human living standards across long stretches of time. If you like this, check out the book “Factfulness,” which I mentioned here almost 4 years ago.
For Your Day Job…
From the author of “Playing to Win,” a quick look at why it is important to position your business as a “high value differentiator,” particularly in a slow market, and the consequences if you don’t.
For leaders and managers who need to communicate change, a recent report from the Academy of Management offers a new idea for rallying a team around a new plan. The best way to talk about change is to focus on what’s not changing.
Your Weekly Dose of Randomness…
How much should you tip when traveling abroad? The answer can vary wildly depending on the country and what type of service you are using. These maps from Hawaiian Islands studied the tipping trends across 162 countries, looking first at TripAdvisor’s tipping etiquette guides for each country then cross-referencing with other articles on tipping in those locales.
These fun facts, and the embedded links that are their own rabbit holes, will entertain, enlighten, totally blow your mind and eliminate any need you might have to read the inside of a Snapple cap any time soon.
Every year, the residents of Bessières in southwest France celebrate Easter by cooking up an omelette large enough to feed 2,000.
‘I didn’t expect my report to cause an immediate global eruption … I got a lot of angry calls’
Whether it’s a terrorist attack or the global economy crashing: how do you live with being the person who foresaw a cataclysmic event? An interesting inside look.